by Jeff Abbott
I wasn’t a hit man or an enforcer. I was their personal spy and Andy gently told me that if I refused, the Barradas would kill me and he would not be able to stop them. He wept as he told me and I believed him. He was giving me a way out. The Barradas had me conduct eleven covert jobs against their competitors and I succeeded in every one of them. I believed the debt was paid. But they made it clear I couldn’t walk away.
I approached the FBI in Miami. I told them I would testify about the Barradas’ spying on the other crime rings if they would provide immunity to me – and to Andy. He saved my ass, so I was saving his. But Andy couldn’t know, they told me, his loyalty to the Barradas ran too deep. He was engaged to a Barrada cousin, who owned the insurance front. I would have to get information on Andy, leverage over him, so that he couldn’t run back to the Barradas, give him no choice but to cooperate. I had to eliminate loyalty as a choice for him.
I set up a meeting with Andy in a Barrada warehouse. The FBI gave me falsified data I could claim to have stolen from the Duarte crime ring, a group in Los Angeles wanting to expand and make alliances in south Florida. I had already lifted some minor stuff from them but this faked FBI info was designed to make Andy drool: names of dealers under their control, bank-account numbers, people on their payroll. I was to take two FBI undercover agents with me. The undercovers pretended to be guys I had recruited to be my operatives and they planned to record what Andy said about the spying operation and then immediately make the offer to him of immunity. Because I couldn’t do it alone, and Andy might have to be physically handled. I told the FBI I couldn’t turn without Andy. He might not want to believe it, but the Barradas would blame him for my betrayal, for bringing me into their camp and me selling them to the feds. They’d kill him, I was sure.
This was the only way to save Andy.
We’re at the warehouse and this is all I remember: I introduce Andy to the guys and we’re talking, we’re showing him the data, I say I can get more on the Duartes but it’s going to involve a substantial operation – the sting I have in mind for them, I can’t do it alone, I need the two guys with me. I ask Andy, real specifically what kind of data he wants me to steal from the Duartes, and he’s talking up a beauty, feeding everything into the tapes that the FBI needs, to put on the real pressure, and he asks me when can you get started and then it’s all a blank then I see him pull a gun from under his shirt. Aims it at one of the feds’ head and I’ve got my gun and I never use a gun much but I shoot because I can’t let him shoot a man in the head.
My bullet hits his shoulder as he shoots at me and hits my chest and we both scream and fall and I raise the gun at him again then it’s all a blank again
The next time I’m aware of what’s going on I’m in a safe house in Jacksonville, and they’re offering me the witness protection program and my best friend, my brother for all intents and purposes, is dead and I don’t know what I did wrong, why I killed him.
Celeste folded the paper.
‘You remembered something else,’ she said quietly.
‘Yes. The first blank. When Andy asked me when I could get started.’ He stopped. ‘Groote and I were talking about the FBI and when they would start naming me in the news – it brought it back, clear as day. But…’
‘Don’t shy away from it,’ she said.
‘He asked me when me and the guys could get started on the project and I said, They’ll do it as soon as we turn off the tape.’
‘You let him know he was being taped.’
‘I said… yes, for that reason, but for a joke, to try and soften the blow. We all laughed. Even Andy. But then he saw my eyes, he panicked, he realized it was a bust and he pulled his gun, aimed it at the undercover’s head… If I’d kept my mouth shut, told him a different way…’
She took his hands in hers. ‘There’s no good way to tell him, is there?’
Miles shook his head.
She gripped his hands tightly. ‘But Andy drew the gun. He chose to fight. You saved a life, two lives, your own. You and I both saved lives, wow, we’re in a special club.’ Her voice broke and tears came to her eyes. ‘If God keeps a ledger, don’t you think our accounts are balanced?’
‘I… shot to wound him, not to kill him. I still don’t remember the details.’
‘He shot you in the chest. Did he show you the same consideration?’
Miles opened his mouth to speak, then shut it.
‘I handled it wrong. He panicked.’
‘Did he expect you to work for the mob forever when you were strong-armed into service? I don’t care if you knew him from when you were in diapers, he’s a horrible friend.’
Miles released her hands. ‘So what does Andy want to tell me, that he’s sorry? He never offers an apology. What I did, what I didn’t do, what the hell does that mean?’
‘The tape the FBI made of the meeting – did you ever listen to it?’
‘They told me the tape failed. Andy died for nothing.’ He sat down again. ‘God, you must think I’m a terrible person.’
She folded her legs under her on the bed. ‘I told you my husband went out to get eggs and coffee. And a man I thought was a close friend, and instead was stalking me, I let him into my home and he tied me up and he waited for Brian to come home. He held a knife to my throat. He didn’t gag me. He said he was going to hurt me because I hadn’t loved him, I didn’t appreciate him – all your standard stalker bullshit – but he wouldn’t hurt Brian. I believed him. I was petrified with terror, I couldn’t think two seconds into the future.’ She tapped the side of her temple. ‘The brain that outfoxed nine very smart people and won five million dollars – frozen like ice. I heard Brian call to me as he opened the front door. If I had screamed for him to run, he would have had a chance. He could have run, saved himself. Instead, with a knife at my throat, I didn’t scream out a warning and my husband came in and the Disturbed Fan tortured him to death. In front of me. So I could see every howl of pain, every grimace, every inch of agony. A neighbor heard my Brian’s screams and called the police and they busted in and killed the Disturbed Fan about three minutes after Brian died. The Fan was smoking a cigarette before he started in on me and I was just lying there, staring into my husband’s dead eyes, waiting to die, wondering, Why didn’t I scream and warn him? Why? ’
‘Because you were afraid. Because you wanted to believe him that he wouldn’t hurt Brian.’
‘Well, how stupid was I?’
‘I wanted to believe Andy would be happy about me getting us both out of the mob. You wanted to believe Brian would be safe if you followed orders. Do you think Brian blamed you, for one second?’
She didn’t answer.
‘If you had screamed, do you think Brian would have run? Hell, no. He would have run to you. Fought to save you.’
The truth of what he said crushed her. ‘All because I wanted to be on a stupid TV show.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘So why can’t we move past all the grief?’
‘Because we loved these people. You don’t shed them like a skin.’
‘Do you think if I kept taking Frost – I would forget what happened to Brian?’ Her voice cracked. ‘If I forget the terror we experienced, aren’t I awful?’
‘Brian wouldn’t want you to carry that grief forever. He sure wouldn’t want you always cutting yourself.’
She wiped at her eyes. ‘Thank you for showing me the confession.’
‘Thanks for telling me what happened to you too.’
The silence between them grew awkward; almost as if they’d been physically intimate and didn’t know what to say, how to part, how to step forward.
She came to his bed, and she curled herself into his arms. They lay, tense, barely touching each other, and she closed her hand around his and he began to relax. Touch to touch. Her hair – she had showered after they ate, put on loose clothes Victor gave her – smelled of tangerine and he realized he had forgotten the perfection of holding a woman, the yield of skin, the beat of breath.<
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If he kept chasing Frost, he could be dead in a day. Or in prison. This might be the last bit of happiness, a final morsel, in his life.
He closed his eyes and slept.
A hand touched his shoulder. Miles opened his eyes. Victor sat, wheeled close to the bed.
Bad news, he mouthed. Let’s talk.
FIFTY-TWO
Victor’s office held a range of computers: two Linux-based workhorses, a gleaming Apple Macintosh, four beige-box PCs.
One monitor displayed a picture of Quantrill. The next of Sorenson, then one of Allison.
Groote stood by one screen, staring at the picture of Sorenson.
‘I haven’t found your daughter, Dennis, and I’m running into stone walls inquiring about government safe houses. Locations are closely guarded secrets. I’m going to have to use a roundabout approach, and that will take time.’
‘If they kill her because Dodd’s dead…’
‘I doubt it. Dodd’s death will freeze them up; they’ll need to regroup. You have to be hopeful,’ Victor said.
Groote sat, put his battered face in his hands, then stood. ‘So what does it buy me? A day, two? Even if we get Frost, I’m not sure how to contact whoever Dodd works for.’
‘I’ve put a couple of bullets in your gun, gentlemen. Or it’s evidence to help you decide either no way in hell you two move forward, or you lay low, or you go to the police right now.’
‘We’re listening,’ Miles said.
Victor gestured at Sorenson’s face on the screen. ‘James Sorenson. But before he was Pentagon, he was posted with the Foreign Service in Beijing. Before that, the army. Now he’s no longer on a government payroll – at least not one anyone will admit. I can find nothing else about him: family, academic background, zilch – those files are sealed. He’s quite the bureaucratic nomad. Usually a government lifer wriggles into a spot and holds on tight.’
‘Or he’s the hot potato, handed around, because he’s trouble,’ Miles said.
‘I have contacts in the army archives and at Defense trying to find out more, but nothing yet, other than one Pentagon friend telling me Sorenson was, and I quote, “a loose cannon, crazy, difficult to deal with.” Sorry, I don’t have a bridge into the Foreign Service; that’s a brick wall to me.’
‘Okay. Quantrill.’
‘I can tell you,’ Groote said, ‘he’s a corporate spy.’
‘More than that,’ Victor said. ‘A dot-com millionaire, moved his money before the Internet bubble broke. He owns a consulting firm that once was accused of corporate espionage, but the charges got dropped; I smell a payoff. He’s also linked to a number of companies that own other companies that own specialty hospitals, both here and overseas, or have contracts with the Veterans Administration.’
‘If he’s illegally testing drugs at one hospital, could he be doing it at another one?’ Groote said. ‘Maybe he and Dodd worked out a deal, to get Frost back from Sorenson – and Amanda’s at one of his hospitals…’
‘I can check, but I don’t think Dodd and Quantrill came to any understanding before Dodd died,’ Victor said. ‘Regarding the testing, I’m almost sure if he tested Frost at one, he might have tested it at others. His only health-care scandal was a VA hospital in Minneapolis accused of testing unapproved cancer medications on patients. Two doctors and an administrator were prosecuted. Another doctor ducked on not enough evidence. That doctor resigned from the VA and took a job with a hospital that Quantrill’s holding company owns in Florida. Otherwise Quantrill sticks to the shadows.’
‘Like Sorenson.’
‘Has it occurred to you Sorenson’s hunting just as hard for you? He’ll know by now his hit in Yosemite failed – and, better for him, he’ll know the government’s willing to lie to the media to cover up Dodd’s involvement. If you’re caught by the police, you’re on the news. You can wipe him out by going public.’
‘Unless he can reach Amanda and she dies if we talk,’ Groote said.
‘Even if he doesn’t, we go public, and the government shuts us up or discredits us, or we talk and we send Frost to pharmaceutical purgatory,’ Miles said. ‘It would kill public acceptance of the research, set it back for years. No. I have to get the formula and then get it to a company that’ll develop it responsibly.’ Miles stared at the photo of Sorenson on the computer screen. A nagging tugged at the back of his brain. The facts didn’t click together in sweet harmony; facts didn’t always; but he couldn’t put his hand on what bothered him.
‘This is a lot, man, thanks,’ Groote said.
Victor wheeled over to Groote. ‘Would you please excuse us, Dennis? I need to speak with Miles privately. Thank you.’
Groote stood and walked out the door without a word.
Victor waited until he heard Groote return to the backyard patio and close the sliding glass door. ‘You can’t trust him.’
‘I know. But I need him. I can’t fight Sorenson alone.’
‘Groote’s ex-FBI. He has a private security firm. You already know he’s not terribly interested in following the law.’
‘Despite his rough edges, he still has that federal air. It’s the only thing that gives me hope he might act decently in the end.’
‘He might need Frost,’ Victor said, ‘more than you or I do. Now… I know you’re angry with Nathan for not telling you the truth about Dodd. But you need to know Nathan’s story. A bit of careful cajoling and a promise of ten free hours of highly expensive database work got me his file via the Department of Defense.’
Miles held up a hand, stood. ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t care.’
Victor leaned forward, tapped Miles on the knee with his prosthetic arm. ‘You asked me to help you, eyes wide open. I’m telling you to listen, ears wide open.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Cleopatra,’ Victor called to one of the computers, ‘play Ruiz video file.’
Prompted by voice-activated software, the computer began to show a film. A nervous Nathan, clean, hair damp, but his nose broken, his eyes bruised, his face pitted and bandaged, sat staring into the camera.
The tape started with the interviewer identifying himself, the date, the location at a U.S. military base in Kuwait.
‘Sergeant Ruiz, I want to talk to you about the events of April second.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Nathan wiped a finger along his bottom lip, caught himself, sat upright. ‘Yes, sir.’
The interviewer summarized the approach Nathan’s artillery unit had taken as the American forces rolled toward Baghdad. Nathan agreed with each point.
‘And then, after you’d fired your missiles, you stopped to await further instructions.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you performed an operational check to see if all systems were functioning properly.’
Nathan nodded. ‘Yes, sir, as always.’
‘And the results?’
‘All was well.’ Nathan swallowed.
‘The infrared beacon that would identify you as American forces was working?’ the interviewer said.
Nathan nodded.
‘I need a verbal answer, please.’
‘Sir, yes, sir, the fireflies – the infrared beacons – were working.’ His voice cracked at the end.
‘So then you stepped away from your post.’
‘Sir, yes, sir, but just a few feet…’
‘And during your absence the beacon failed.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Nathan’s voice stayed steady. ‘I assume so. The backup failed as well.’
‘And how long were you away from the equipment?’
‘Only a few minutes, sir, then I returned.’
‘You didn’t notice the fireflies had malfunctioned.’
Silence.
‘Did you hear the question, Sergeant?’
‘Sir, yes, sir, I heard you. I did not notice the beacon had failed.’
‘Do you only pay attention to the equipment during operational checks, Sergeant Ruiz?’
‘Sir, no, sir.’
‘But you failed to notice that the beacon failed, and the appropriate alarm also failed.’
Four beats of silence, and Nathan’s military impassivity faded into pure pain. He fought hard to put a calm expression back on his face. ‘Sir, yes, sir, but…’
‘But?’
‘Out in the field, sir, the unexpected happens. I don’t know why the system failed. It… just did.’
‘Yet you were responsible for its repair.’
‘That’s true… sir.’ Nathan swallowed; sweat formed on his bruised and battered forehead.
‘And how many minutes before the friendly fire hit?’
‘Nine minutes after we launched our last missile, sir.’
‘Nine minutes and you don’t notice the beacon isn’t transmitting.’
‘Sir, yes, sir.’
‘Nine minutes you had to save your company.’ An awful, heavy silence and Nathan blinked hard into the camera. The unseen interrogator continued: ‘According to Captain Cariotis, during those nine minutes you were talking and laughing with your friends, enjoying the success of your mission. You thought your work for the evening was done, with all your missiles successfully launched.’
‘Sir, yes, sir.’ Nathan closed his eyes and took a long breath. ‘Sir, yes, sir.’ Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. ‘But the fire control could have confirmed for the pilot, sir, that we were American forces… I don’t understand how I alone-’
‘You’re right there, on the scene, with the broken beacon. You could have noticed it. You could have fixed it. You could have alerted fire control there was a problem.’
‘Jesus,’ Miles said, ‘they blamed him for the entire accident.’ His mouth went dry, thinking of Nathan’s nightmare back in Santa Fe, crying out, I fixed it I fixed it I fixed it.
‘Cleopatra, pause video,’ Victor told the computer, and Nathan’s face froze on the screen. ‘Without the working infrared a U.S. pilot could think Nathan’s company were Republican Guard forces. A pilot gets a bad confirmation from fire control after he sees missiles rise in the dark, he fires, and you have dead American boys all over the desert.’